I often get asked how I reconcile being a Christian with being a Democrat. That’s actually a very easy question to answer. My three favorite words in the Bible are “Love is kind…” You don’t even need to be a Christian or follow the Bible to appreciate these words. They say that love is not merely some emotion or affection: it is an act. Love is expressed through kindness. Through action. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” It’s the most quoted verse in the Bible. But it illustrates this point, right? God loved the world, so he acted. He acted by becoming a man dying for sins. The litmus test of someone’s Christian faith is not how righteous they are; it’s how kind they are. And I’ve been thinking of this a lot in terms of the MAGA movement and the so-called Christian right because not only is this not kind; it’s cruel. It’s downright vicious even. And cruelty is the opposite of kindness. But it’s not motivated by “hate” which is what we would think of as the opposite of “love.” It’s motivated by “righteousness” Look at the story of Cain and Abel. Cain felt that his sacrifice should have been honored by God instead of Ael’s. In a certain way, you can see how he came to that conclusion. God said that they had to till the soil by the sweat of their brow, and Cain did that. Meanwhile, his lazy little brother played with sheep and then murdered one. When God preferred Abel’s sacrifice to Cain’s, Cain murdered his brother because he was RIGHT! Thus, the ultimate expression of him being “right” was cruelty. MAGA is defined by cruelty. Take, for example, cheering on the removal of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants. Set aside everything else and answer this one question: Is that kind? People are being sent somewhere where they can quite literally be murdered (and some have). Set aside your justifications for a moment. Is that an act of kindness? Is incarcerating children because their parents crossed a border illegally kind? Is depriving them of food and essential medical care kind? Is shooting people in the back kind? Is depriving children of food because their parents don’t have a job kind? I could go on for quite a while. Someone once said, “cruelty is the point.” I find that hard to deny. The heart of MAGA is cruelty. Now I can hear people typing furiously defending these types of policies, declaring that these people were WRONG. I’m not going to go into all that because it’s a biblically moot argument. Kindness is not a reward for good behavior. Jesus said love your enemies as you love yourself. That means you should be kind to your enemies. I don’t care if someone is a Muslim, gay, transgender, Marxist, liberal commie. The bible says you should love them. And loving them means being kind to them. Full stop. Jesus was kind. Jesus healed people–free of charge I might add. Jesus fed the hungry without proof they were looking for work. Why? Because kindness isn’t a respecter of persons because kindness is not dependent on actions. It’s not a reward. It is an expression of love. So this is a genuine question for the Trump-supporting Christians. Where is the kindness?